RISE cocktail curtain-raisers

RISE recitals will only take place in the January season.

Ingo Holland passes the bassoon

Ingo Holland, principal bassoon in the CTSO for 25 years and a teacher for even longer, has retired and passed on his bassoon to the man who was his best pupil for many years: Xavier Cloete. Xavier, the winner of the second Len van Zyl Conductorsâ€™ Competition, is teaching bassoon at Musicon in Bloemfontein.
Says Xavier: â€œIt is a PÃ¼chner model 23, for me the Ferrari of bassoons!
â€œWhen I bought the bassoon, Ingo also gave me a lot of his music, a very generous and helpful gesture. He has always been a mentor and so much more to me. We have a very good relationship and I view him as very close family. My buying his bassoon makes me feel I am keeping his bassoon playing alive.
â€œI feel I am privileged. For a musician to part with his instrument after decades of playing and bonding with it is very difficult for it is how you express yourself. I can only say that I am more than honoured to own this Golden Bassoon, as Rodney Trudgeon once called it after playing a recording of Ingo playing the Mozart Bassoon concerto with the CTSO on FMR.â€

CPYO in film with Charlize Theron

The CPYO musicians were filmed this week at the City Hall with Charlize Theron in The Last Face, a romantic drama with Javier Bardem, produced by Sean Penn!

Andrey Pisarev comes back to Cape Town for the second concert on November 6 to give us what we know from past experience will be a gorgeous Grieg. He plays this week with the Johannesburg Philharmonic Orchestra which, we are delighted to note, received a grant from the lottery to enable the company to put on a two-week season. (This, of course, begs the question: when will we hear about our lottery application sent 18 months ago?).
Back to the music at hand: Van Alphen will conduct the Symphonic Poem â€œFestklÃ¤ngeâ€ by Liszt and the Symphony no 8 by DvorÃ¡k. This is another of those not-to-be-missed concerts. Pisarev is a UNISA winner, a competition which sent him to the worldâ€™s stages.

FOM Gala on December 4

Excitement is mounting for the FOM gala on December 4. The dynamic Martin Panteleev and the superb Austrian violinist Benjamin Schmid are the artists, and both have big news â€“ Panteleev makes his debut with the Royal Philharmonic and Schmid has been included as one of the 35 great violinists of the 20th century, born 1948 and 1985 respectively, in a book just published in France.
Chairman Derek Auret is glowing about the new Klatzow piece, Congratulations; Scheherezade is a show-stopper; Paganini is in Schmidâ€™s fingertips so what more can we ask? Tickets from Computicket; discounts and entry to the post-concert reception only for members of Friends of Orchestral Music. Youâ€™ll find FOM details here: www.fomct.com

Outreach really reaching out!

The Madislale concert at the V&A Amphitheatre in which the young musicians accompanied A Boyâ€™s Story of How Africa Was Created, authored by Else Rohrs, a majestic tale, told through the eyes of a little boyâ€™s wildly fantastical imagination, brought tears to hundreds of eyes.

Many CPYO musicians joined the CPO in the Artscape Youth Festival.

The CPY Wind Ensemble blew up a storm, also at the V&A Waterfront. The challenge was not only the wind, but the musicians walked out on stage straight after our very own â€œstormersâ€, the WP rugby team, won the Currie Cup Final! The CPY WE is also getting together with Golden Grove Primary in a concert on November 1. That kind of collaboration in the community is a win for everyone.

Whatâ€™s coming up for the CPYO ? On November 9 the CPYO will again perform at the Durbanville Childrenâ€™s Concert, with Zanne Stapelberg and Niel Rademan at 18:00 in what is becoming an annual fundraiser for this wonderful home.

Why do we learn music?

Carolyn Phillips, the author of the Twelve Benefits of Music Education and former executive director of the Norwalk Youth Symphony in Connecticut, USA, tells us why. They are linked from an article by Dave Gerhart on percussioneducation.com.